


A Flower for the Lady

by TheAzureFox



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS
Genre: Angst, Betrayal, F/M, Funeral, Gen, Minor Character Death, Vyra is Revolver's "Mother", references to Greek mythology, regrets and mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-11
Updated: 2017-11-11
Packaged: 2019-01-31 18:32:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12687840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheAzureFox/pseuds/TheAzureFox
Summary: His mother departs to the afterlife.He's not sure how to feel about that.





	A Flower for the Lady

**Author's Note:**

> This fanfic assumes that Vyra (and, therefore, Kyoko Taki) died in episode 26. 
> 
> That is all.

Vyra’s body sits in a casket. Her arms are folded across her chest, her eyes closed as a small smile spreads on cold, pink lips. She lies on a flowerbed of red-and-white lilies, relaxed and at ease as an audience beholds her with flaming eyes and quieted snarls of disapproval.

One-by-one, the Knights of Hanoi all offer up prayers to the woman, bowing their heads as they kneel before her corpse. Some do so out of obedience to the organization; others do so with their faces screwed into disgust and without the slightest inclination as to why they are obliged to show respect to this  _cretin_. However, under the sturdy gaze of their leader, they give their last thanks to the woman, whisper the word “traitor” under their breath, and move on.

Revolver watches them all. His face is blank, managed in such a way that it is hard to tell what he is thinking. He can hear the insults whispered among the ruffians who serve him, can hear the questions from children hardened by terrorism but not quite death and he can hear his father’s words as he declares a prayer to the dead. His father is no more than a stand-in priest, the only one experienced enough to send Vyra –  _Kyoko Taki_  – off and into the river of Styx, but he is good enough and that's all Revolver needs to know.

The boy wonders how he is supposed to feel. He doesn’t know if he even  _can_  feel. There’s a void in his heart, a black hole that swallows up any trace of sentiment he has inside him. Faust is beside him, his pseudo brother struggling to hold back the tears that glaze his eyes wet. The man had been infatuated with Vyra and, perhaps, he had a reason to be. He was Vyra’s fiancée in the real world, the woman he had poured his heart to and now…now she was _gone_.

Gone before Faust could kneel on one leg and show her the gift he had prepared. Gone before he could show her the diamond ring he had secreted away in his work-study, gone before Vyra could even make an attempt to find it. She was gone before Faust could even propose and gone before their war against SOL had come to a blessed end.

 _How sad._  Revolver keeps his gaze focused on the corpse before him. The sound of ocean water slapping against the stone of the temple he stands in filters into his ears but it does little to distract him. He can see the way Faust covers his mouth, sees the way his older brother tries to restrain a sob by muffling any sound possible.  _Is that how I should feel too?_

He wonders.

There are many things Revolver wants to say. There are many things Revolver wished hadn’t happened. There are many emotions he had hoped he would sense inside him and none of which actually resided down within him.

He feels the phantom sensation of fingers through his hair, of a woman’s kind and gentle smile and of a mother who wasn’t quite his mother but just close enough.

“______.” She says his name like he’s the only thing she needs to protect, like his life is always more important than hers and, for that, she will always serve him as a servant not his mother. “Revolver.”

_Why?_

He remembers the golden flecks of light that had poured down upon the VRAINS and restrains himself from punching a nearby pillar. He remembers how Vyra – his  _mother_  – had stood beside Blue Angel with a smile, admitting her defeat to the girl with the release of the Anothers and a prayer to the gods above.

 _Why_ her _? Why not us?_

His mother had chosen Blue Angel over Hanoi, had chosen the Anothers and her own death over his father and the plan they had so immaculately worked out together.

 _Why not_ me _?_

Revolver feels betrayed. Vyra chose the side of Playmaker’s allies, chose the side of his  _enemies._  Was he really so worthless to her then that she chose a lab rat over her own  _son_? Were his plans so falsely laid that she deemed them such a failure in comparison to the thin hopes that that  _cursed angel_  wore?

He curls his left hand into a fist, pinches the nails of his fingers into his skin and then releases it with a side. Faust, having taken notice of his worries, drops a hand on his shoulder and  _squeezes_. Revolver looks at the man, nods in reassurance, and then twists the red lily Revolver holds in his in right hand. His gaze drops to the item, looking over it with scrutiny as his father’s voice drones on.

It is a beautiful thing, this crimson entity. It is a flower speckled with white and orange flecks and adorned with a dark green stem that sits in-between his fingers. He has coded it into existence with his own two hands, hoping it to be the last thing he would give to the woman who had nurtured him from near-death. He’d even added a fragrant of strawberries – Vyra’s favorite scent – to give the gift even more of a personal touch. It was a smell that he hoped would make Vyra smile in the afterlife, that would make her happy even when he wanted to shout and scream at her for leaving him behind. He wanted to grab her hands, to hug her in his arms again like he was child and demand of her why she had committed suicide for the sake of someone else’s hopes.

 _Mother…Vyra…Kyoko…_ He called her by many names but, in the end, he had favored her tremendously. She and Faust and been his only sources of comfort and reassurance in the times where he sat beside his father’s corpse alone and isolated. They had been the ones to encourage him to take up his father’s mantle, to rise up as the leader of Hanoi and to do his best for the sake of the twisted justice they all fought for.

Now, she was gone. Now, Faust was alone and heartbroken and without a fiancée to present his coveted diamond ring to. Now, Revolver was struggling with the emotions left behind by her death and the bitter aftermath that leaves ashes coated on his tongue.

Dr. Kogami’s words come to an end and his gaze meets Revolver’s. He beckons his son forward and Revolver obeys, approaching the casket step-by-step as the Knights of Hanoi hush and watch him carefully. They gaze upon him from behind expressionless masks, gaze upon him like predators waiting to pounce. He knows some covet his position as leader. He knows some of them are envious of him, that some would willingly  _kill_  him if they thought it would get them anywhere. However, he also knows that, among all these ruffians, there are also those who are devoutly loyal to him, who look to him and bow their heads to him because, in their eyes, he is the true testament of a strong leader.

Vyra’s body lays before him and Revolver feels his traitorous lips part in saddened surprise at her apparent liveliness. She doesn’t look the least bit dead and he half-expects her to rise out of the coffer she’s lying in to wrap her arms around his neck and say “Surprise! Fooled ya!”. However, no matter how hard he wishes to prod her awake, to make suggestion that this is just all some elaborate prank, he can’t keep himself from seeing the truth.

Vyra’s a dead and cold corpse who is lying in wait for the afterlife.

His gaze trails to her eyes, trails to the area his fingers had last touched and tries not to show the signs of weakness he wants to show.

( _He remembers closing them. He remembers and he regrets but she is dead and there is nothing he can do but say “Farewell” to her without any words_.)

He bows before her, kneeling and dips his head to her in the utmost display of reverence. A thousand eyes watch as he does so and a thousand eyes judge him with the wrath of the gods. He clutches the red lily to his chest, tries not to feel the way everything catches up to him at once and manages to come to a stand.

“For Vyra. For Kyoko Taki. For the woman who was like my mother and for the woman who gave her all to help Hanoi.” He ignores the way the word  _traitor_  hangs in the air and continues on. “She served her purpose and she served me well. For that, I must thank her in full. I will give her my last offering before she is taken from us by the gods above.”

Her arms lie in wait for his gift and he does not hesitate to obey. His fingers touch the cold one’s of his mother and he uncurls them so that he can rest his red lily on her chest. Its crimson petals shine like a gunshot on the area right where her heart rests, a bloody wound which furls open and then bleeds into the underworld.

“Thank you, mom.”

Dr. Kogami nods and four Knights of Hanoi manifest to push the casket across the floor of the temple. They push her coffer to the temple’s edge, where greedy hands of water splash against stone in an attempt to drag the corpse inside under. Sloshing waves spit with venom and, with a few pushes from the minions without names, Vyra’s coffin floats onto the surface of a wide, blue ocean. She drifts forward, her red lily clasped fervently in her dead hands, before the waters of the VRAINS open up and swallow her casket whole.

Revolver bows his head as he watches her disappear, the void in him burning a hole in his head until he thinks that, in a way, he too is sporting that bloody lily in cold hands eerily reminiscent of his own.

Dr. Kogami approaches and stops before him and Revolver is immediately at attention. The man’s eyes are nearly unintelligible before his son, coldly calculating but not without the slightest hint of remorse that marks him as  _human._  The man’s lips are twisted into a frown deeper than usual, his gaze soft as he sees that Revolver is struggling to feel a thing.

“Sometimes,” the man says, speaking in the most gentle manner possible, “people who are important to you will disappear from your life. And, when that happens, it’s okay if you feel frustrated at being unable to feel anything. There’s a void in your heart and I understand that you feel frustrated that it exists as such. However, as long as you want to mourn for her, as long as you want to take revenge for her sake and do your best in her stead, that’s all that counts. You are grateful for all that she’s done, you miss her and, sometimes, just crying isn’t enough.”

The boy’s eyes widen and he clutches at his chest, trying to say the words he wants to say but finding he cannot. He steps back, gaze stolen by the peaceful ocean waters, and then he returns his eyes to his father’s own.

“I want her back.”

“I know.”

“I didn’t want it to end like this.”

“I know.”

“I don’t understand why this had to happen.”

“I know.”

“I shouldn't have purged her. I shouldn’t have  _killed_  her.”

Revolver chokes on his own words.

His father shakes his head. “She knew what would have happened if she had lived. Her termination was a blessing you brought upon her, never forget that.”

“Right…Father.”

Dr. Kogami looks over him and then steps past him, pausing only a little ways away. “Remember too. It is not your fault that Vyra had died. If Blue Angel had not changed Kyoko’s heart, Vyra would still be here today.”

There’s something so ominous about those words that Revolver can’t help but think them true. However, as much as he wants to tear Blue Angel to pieces for the grave mistake she has enacted, his anger has long since succumbed to the emptiness he feels inside him. So, as his father leaves without another word to follow in his path, Revolver approaches the end of the temple and the beginning of the ocean and lets the water of the underworld lick at his boots.

“Mother….I’m so sorry…”

But she is far too gone to hear his apologies now.

He breaks inside.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not 100% certain if Vyra is, indeed, dead or not in the actual show but the fact that Revolver ended up closing her eyes in what (I saw) as a sign of respect to the departed kind of convinced me she might be gone for good. I really ended up liking her character and while I'm sad to see her gone after only being introduced so shortly ago in episode 22, I'm glad she at least got to be cool and kick butt for such a short amount of time. 
> 
> Anyways, I wanted to explore Revolver's feelings towards his "mother" (as I've assumed their relationship to be a pseudo mother-son one) here. In the scene where he closes her eyes, he expresses no emotion to suggest that he is sad or even angry to see her go. For someone who was supposedly so close to his childhood self, he didn't really show any sign that he cared about her dying and there wasn't even a scene about him resisting the notion of "purging her". I get that, if it comes down to it, his mission is more important than his "mother", but the way Revolver doesn't even react in the final moments of the episode (or even at the tail end) suggests he was either repressing his emotions or flat-out didn't care about her.
> 
> I, obviously, chose to write about the former. And, while Revolver strikes me as a character to be cold-hearted, I also think that his job as the leader of Hanoi overshadowed Vyra's importance to him the moment she chose Playmaker's allies over Hanoi's goals. The result is an empty void in his heart, the wanting to grieve but the struggling notion of maintaining control, feeling betrayed and angry and guilt until all his emotions combine into the empty numbness that festers inside him.


End file.
